A variety of consumers ranging from representatives of enterprises to individuals desire improved voicemail services in order to become more efficient. Voicemail services can include call answering and messaging. Call answering occurs when a voice mail system answers a call that a subscriber does not answer because the subscriber is on a call or is otherwise not available. Messaging occurs when a subscriber dials into a voice mail system and sends a message to another subscriber for retrieval at a later time.
A variety of companies have developed a class of computers specially designed to provide call answering and voice messaging services. These companies design the computers to interface with a telephone switch. Typically, analog networking protocols transport a message sent to another computer or device that is not within the sending computer's or device's enterprise network. The analog networking protocols are based on dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signaling and analog voice playback. Request for Comment (RFC) 2421 of the Network Working Group, G. Voudreuil, Voice Profile for Internet Mail (VPIM)-Version 2, September 1998, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, provides a profile of Internet standard protocols for use as a digital voice messaging network protocol. Systems that adopt the VPIM protocols can send messages between each other.
The increase in the demand for voice messaging services, and the adoption of the above-referenced VPIM protocols, are two factors that indicate an opportunity to provide expanded functionality in voicemall services. In addition, typical voicemail systems have a number of limitations. For example, typical voicemail systems do not have a convenient mechanism to save messages sent from a specific mailbox and to provide the sender with access to those sent messages.
It is also difficult to retrieve saved messages. Typical voice message systems save all messages in chronological order and there is no method for organizing saved messages by category. In addition, such systems do not have a fail-safe way to determine the other (if any) recipients of a received voice message, or to assure that all recipients of an original message are copied on a reply to the message. Furthermore, extensions and phone numbers are difficult to remember and typical voicemail systems do not address this problem.